Re-dressing America's frontier past, Peter Boag

Americans have long cherished romantic images of the frontier and its colorful cast of characters, where the cowboys are always rugged and the ladies always fragile. But in this book, Peter Boag opens an extraordinary window onto the real Old West. Delving into countless primary sources and surveying sexological and literary sources, Boag paints a vivid picture of a West where cross-dressing--for both men and women--was pervasive, and where easterners as well as Mexicans and even Indians could redefine their gender and sexual identities. Boag asks, why has this history been forgotten and erased?

Americans have long cherished romantic images of the frontier and its colorful cast of characters, where the cowboys are always rugged and the ladies always fragile. But in this book, Peter Boag opens an extraordinary window onto the real Old West. Delving into countless primary sources and surveying sexological and literary sources, Boag paints a vivid picture of a West where cross-dressing--for both men and women--was pervasive, and where easterners as well as Mexicans and even Indians could redefine their gender and sexual identities. Boag asks, why has this history been forgotten and erased?

"Known to all police west of the Mississippi" : disrobing the female-to-male cross-dresser -- "I have done my part in the winning of the West" : unveiling the male-to-female cross-dresser -- "And love is a vision and life is a lie" : the daughters of Calamity Jane -- "He was a Mexican" : race and the marginalization of male-to-female cross-dressers in Western history -- "Death of a modern Diana" : sexologists, cross-dressers, and the heteronormalization of the American frontier -- Conclusion : Sierra Flats and haunted valleys : cross-dressers and the contested terrain of America's frontier past